Introduction to datasets

This page provides an overview of datasets in BigQuery.

Datasets

A dataset is contained within a specific project. Datasets
are top-level containers that are used to organize and control access to your
tables and views. A table
or view must belong to a dataset, so you need to create at least one dataset before
loading data into BigQuery.

Dataset limitations

BigQuery datasets are subject to the following limitations:

You can set the geographic location at creation time only. After a dataset has
been created, the location becomes immutable and can't be changed in the
GCP Console, the classic BigQuery web UI, the command-line tool, or by
calling the patch or update API methods.

All tables referenced in a query must be stored in datasets in the same
location.

When copying a table, the
datasets containing the source table and destination table must reside in the
same location.

Dataset names must be unique per project.

As you approach thousands of datasets in a project, classic UI performance
begins to degrade, and listing datasets becomes slower.